How Impossible Is the Indians Streak?

From Michael Jordan sending the Cavaliers home in 1989 and a heartbreaking game seven loss in the 1997 World Series to LeBron James taking his talents to South Beach in 2010, Cleveland has a rough history when it comes to sports.

However, things have started to turn around. LeBron brought a title back to his hometown, and the Indians made it to the World Series. And, even though they lost to the only team with a more pathetic history in the MLB in the Chicago Cubs, there was still hope. Fast forward to August 24 and the Indians were 69-50, atop the AL Central division.

After five games, they were on a hot streak. After 10, I started following them so closely that I got notifications when they won. After 15, I, along with thousands of MLB fans, was checking the box scores to see if they had gotten any closer to the magic number 20—the American League record set in 2002 by Billy Beane’s Moneyball Oakland Athletics. On the afternoon of September 13, they crossed the metaphorical plateau and cemented the Indians in MLB history, pulling off the seemingly impossible. The streak would end two days later at 22, giving Cleveland the longest winning streak in MLB history.

So, exactly how impossible was it? While it was incredibly rare, how would it stack up to lightning strikes, three-peats, and coconut deaths? Let’s take a look:

3000-to-1: Being struck by lightning in your lifetime. Statistically, one out of every Stuy student picking up this paper will be struck by lightning at some point in his or her life. Rare, but we can do better.

20350-to-1: Being murdered in the United States in a calendar year (2014 statistics). Don’t let this scare you, but you are much more likely to be murdered in the next twelve months than the Indians were to go on this winning streak. But sleep well tonight!

27000-to-1: Odds of a three-peat in the MLB (or NBA). Even if you assume that all teams are equal, the odds of a three-peat still fall far short of being as rare as Cleveland’s streak.

75000-to-1: Being hit by a comet. A lot cooler, but nowhere near as rare. Let’s keep going.

200000-to-1: Giving birth to conjoined twins.

954056-to-1: Odds of getting into top-five colleges per U.S. News and World Report. Using Class of 2021 statistics and assuming all students are somehow equal, the odds of being accepted into Princeton, Yale, Harvard, University of Chicago, and Columbia are still twice as likely as the Indians’ win streak.

1048576-to-1: The Athletics’ 20-game winning streak. It doesn’t take a genius to realize this is four times as likely as the 22-game win streak. Still, the record stood for 15 years, and it made a movie about math and baseball interesting.

2396304-to-1: Throwing back-to-back no-hitters. Seemingly impossible but still less rare than the streak is another amazing accomplishment in MLB history. Accomplished only once by Johnny Vander Meer in 1938, this is a record likely to never be touched with the development of pitch counts and strong bullpens.

4194304-to-1: The Indians 22-game winning streak.

250,000,000-to-1: Odds of dying by coconut. As promised, here are the odds of dying by coconut. Coming in as more common than death by shark attack (300,000,000-to-1), death by coconut blows the Indians win streak out of the water in terms of rarity. If the Indians had managed to extend the win streak six more games to 28 in a row, they would have passed the coconut milestone, but now it’ll be a long time before any team comes close to breaking through that barrier.